


as it was

by dansunedisco



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bucky Barnes Lives, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21554236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dansunedisco/pseuds/dansunedisco
Summary: Steve falls, Bucky lives, and the rest of history is, more or less, exactly the same as it would’ve been.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers
Kudos: 7





	as it was

His fingers are frozen solid, clamped with adrenaline strength around the iron bar keeping him from a sharp drop into a Swiss crevasse, but it’s not enough, he’s not gonna make it; he hears the creak, the sound of weak metal folding under his weight, but he reaches up anyway. Desperate. Up, up, he reaches with everything he has, teeth gritted, clinging to life, the tips of his fingers inches away from brushing against Steve’s. Almost -- there -- 

_“Bucky! Hang on! Grab my hand!”_

Metal screeches. He drops. There’s no time to register the heartstopping weightlessness before a strong, solid grip clamps around his wrist. He cries out, and then he’s swung. He soars through the air, eyes blurring with tears from the wind stabbing like knives to his cheek. He lands on his back; the world turned upside down and right-side up in a span of seconds; the worst rollercoaster he’s ever been on. He gasps air back into his lungs, scrambles up, skittering on his hands and knees to the edge of the train car. _Get Steve get Steve get Steve_ blares like klaxons in his ears, blood roaring in time with his rabbiting heart.

He grabs the edge of the mangled, blown-open door and thrusts his hand out into the void. Winter whips against his exposed skin. “Steve, Steve -- COME ON!” he yells over the howling wind, and he almost has him, he almost gets a solid hold, but the metal screams again, a final, terrible swan song, and all of what holds Captain America and everything Bucky’s ever loved up gives way, and then Steve’s falling, falling, falling into frozen ice and forever. “No, no, _nononono, oh my god_ , NO NO NO--” he’s leaning so far forward he almost follows, he almost dips headfirst into the abyss too, but that selfish shred of humanity jerks him back at the last second, and now Steve’s gone, and Bucky--

Bucky lives.

Eventually, he moves; shuffles back along the floorboards, body numb from the cold and quaking from the unbelievable. Mountains zip by outside. There's a perfect view of it from the jagged cutout hole he can't seem to turn away from. He swallows down the bile burning at his throat and gets up, eventually: forces himself upright and locks it all away. He tucks a forgotten pistol -- Russian-made, by the looks -- into his hip holster and slings his rifle over his shoulder. His ears ring and ring, a high-pitched tremor that stays in the silence after a night’s worth of shelling. He swipes his mouth.

Captain America’s shield waits for him. He picks it up. Throwing it clear from the train car feels tempting, a wave of despair and rage tucks into his ribs, but he can’t bring himself to actually do it. Instead, he slinks off to the main engine; limping and broken and holding what’s left of his best friend, his brother.

He arrives in London with red-rimmed eyes and a sore throat. It took everything he had to keep his hands from strangling -- _crushing --_ Armin Zola when Dernier brought him forward, and when the rat bastard’s whisked off the transport by a nameless SSR agent, _safe_ , Bucky knows he made the wrong choice.

The noble ones, he’s starting to learn, often are.

“We _had_ him,” he croaks, “I should’ve--”

Dum Dum claps a hand to his shoulder. Happy looks away, jaw working. Dernier has been staring at the same pint for most of the evening. For once, the Howling Commandos are as quiet as the grave; a star-spangled spectre hovering over them like a shroud. 

  
  


Agent Carter finds him at the bottom of a bottle of scotch. His tolerance was nothing to shake a stick at before, but he feels nothing now. Literally nothing. Not a buzz, not anything. Just a burn going down and a brief spike of warmth in his gut that melts away quickly, too quickly. He’s never known grief to knock the drunk out of someone. He locks the fear, the knowing, the expanding, impossible world inside of him away with a long swig of the rotgut swill that passes for booze around here.

“Miss Carter,” he greets her, polite, though he leaves a stiffness in his tone he hopes she takes as a dismissal. He’s been granted twenty-four hours of liberty on account of what happened, and it took Morita and Dum Dum both to hold him back from stealing a motorcycle and barreling through the Alps himself. There’s no body, no dogtags, no proof, and Steve’s a damn _supersoldier._ He could’ve survived, he could be _down there_ still. And Bucky left him.

 _He’s gone_ , they said. _Barnes, he’s_ dead _\--_

He didn’t stick around to hear the rest; the platitudes, the reasoning. They’ve all lost people. Brothers, friends, family. He doesn’t know a single soul who hasn’t been touched by this war, but it doesn’t make it any easier. _He’s gone_ , they said, and he didn’t want to hear a single god-damn word of it.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she says. She is impeccably manicured but her eyes are noticeably bloodshot. “May I?”

He gestures to the expanse of the bombed-out bar, and the singular chair sitting right across from him out of respect; a table and a plate for the missing soldier, his friend. “By all means,” he says, throat working around how indignant Steve would be, if he saw how Bucky was treating his best girl. He’s being rude, extremely, but he can’t bring himself to care. Steve isn’t here. Steve isn’t around _to_ care. What does it matter now?

Agent Carter, however, surprises him by picking up a dusty glass from behind the bar and pouring herself two fingers. She drags another chair to the table and sits, takes a prim sip; closes her eyes for a moment, like she’s savoring the drink -- but her chin trembles, almost unnoticeably except for how hard Bucky is staring at her, and all the fight goes out of him with a soundless sigh.

This much he knows: the both of them loved Steve Rogers long before he was ever Captain America. She was at Camp Lehigh, and she saw Steve through boot camp and his miraculous transformation. She got him the plane. She got him to Bucky. It might’ve been Steve’s path to walk, but she sure as hell helped pave it. He also knows she sanctioned the Zola extraction. Steve’s death is on him. He knows that. It’s no one else’s burden to bear. He won’t let anyone take that from him. But if he has to share it with someone… he figures he would be alright if he were to share it with her. 

When she opens her eyes, they’re watery, shiny in the pale light of the moon shining down from a cloudless night time sky -- a reprieve from the dust and the smoke and bombs -- and Bucky offers her a small, fragile smile.

They drink silently, the crushing weight of guilt hovering over them by a memory of a fallen friend. Stifling, suffocating; an all encompassing war. He promised to follow that jerk kid from Brooklyn into the jaws of hell, until the end of the line. He tips the amber liquid in the crystal glass and chuckles, spiteful and angry. He followed Steve, but Steve’s the one who fell straight into the flames. “So. What’s next?”

Peggy takes a deep breath, and he sees the very moment she’s pulled herself together. Or, rather, the moment she shoves all her pain into a tiny box and sends it down, down and away. “We move on,” she says. “And you pick up where he left off. There's a war still left to fight, Sergeant Barnes. Isn’t there?”


End file.
